Wolfmother "Wolfmother" [2005]

These lousy sons of bitches. Aussie Aughts trio Wolfmother was apparently strictly for people who didn't think Ozzy Osbourne sounded retarded enough. How this got over in the post-9/11 decade is a mystery; my best guess would be that The Strokes and all the limey wanna-be Strokes were busy ripping off every other rock band of the past 30 years, but the geniuses of Wolfmother discovered they'd left Black Sabbath wide open. In case you are under the impression Jack White needs to be more vocally cloying while describing the girls he's having sex with, then this might just be the band for you. What's shocking is these guys are from Australia and not Canada; I'd have sworn they'd started out as a Krokus cover band. That said, it's actually Mr. White to whom Wolfmother keeps coming back to suckle at the teat of, a sort of weird and disturbingly ironic image I'd rather not see the psychological research on. Probably because drop-tuning guitars to Kyussian depths only allows for slight enjoyment over the course of an entire album (just check Kyuss' total album sales for proof), it seems these guys set out to be popular enough to open for the White Stripes and get to squeeze Meg White's boobs after the show. Pretty lame, but indie rockers necessarily had to lower their expectations once the music biz had officially gone in the toilet.